


Echoes Fade Away

by self_indulgent_authorship



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Blood, Blood and Injury, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Other Characters Are Mentioned, Parallels, Selectively Mute Link (Legend of Zelda), cryptic tags for a cryptic beginning, seriously i have no clue what else to tag this with, um...idk what else lol, worth the double tag it get's quite a bit of attention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:27:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26457184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/self_indulgent_authorship/pseuds/self_indulgent_authorship
Summary: Do you remember it? That day.
Relationships: Link/Revali (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 30
Kudos: 180





	Echoes Fade Away

**Author's Note:**

> look man, i don't know where this came from, okay. i'm just vibin' and this took control of my fingers and held me at ransom until i wrote it. y'know that meme i put on tumblr about suddenly there are 10k words? yeah. that's cause of this. also catch me delving into my revalink inspo playlist again for titles and such, hope you enjoy it lol. 
> 
> title, and some inspiration, taken from the song Silhouette by Aquilo.

_ Do you remember it? That day. _

The air came in frantic gasps, struggling desperately to catch a breath, to convince his spasming lungs to work and work properly. Rain fell in hard, sharp daggers, hitting the ground with hard thwacks and spatters. His hands slipped on the hilt of the sword, catching on the guard and barely keeping a grip as the ground shook beneath him, tilting and turning. Something warm made his tunic stick to his side, dripping down and muddying up the rain. He tried to ignore it, and the pain digging into him like a sharp blade.

_ Sometimes I think about it. I don’t want to, but I do.  _

How long had he been doing this? His legs burned beneath him but he kept moving, kept pushing. If other sounds joined the chorus of the rain, he did not mark them. He heard nothing but the ringing in his ears, the hitches in his breathing, the pounding beat of his heart, thundering in his chest. The ground was slick and treacherous, and he fought to keep a hold on it, to keep moving. If he stopped, he would die. 

_ Everything went wrong so quickly...there was no predicting it.  _

The wind howled, and he turned to look behind him, just in time to roll into a dodge. He hit the ground hard, watching with dazed, exhausted eyes as the beam which surely would have killed him soared over his head and exploded somewhere nearby. Some voice was calling to him, phantom hands tugging desperately at his arm, begging him to move, to flee the death approaching him from all sides.

_ There were so many of them. What chance did we stand? What hope did we have?  _

For several seconds he could not move. He lay still, staring up at the sky, the ugly dark clouds festering above. The air would not come to him, would not cooperate with his bruised and maybe broken ribs. His hands scrabbled on the ground and on the hilt of the sword, sticky and red, with what, he couldn’t yet allow himself to notice. The hit to the ground made the tears in his side burn, and his fingertips numb, his vision taking on a surreally tunneled quality. 

_ So many bodies, so much destruction… _

Grimacing fiercely, ignoring the ache building into an excruciating flame, he rolled again and pushed himself to his knees, trembling. Then to his hands, his stomach rolling at the puddle of red and rain water dripping off his clothes. The sword burned brightly, it’s warmth a comfort even as it scalded him. But even the sword could not stop the world from darkening for a moment as pain overtook his senses. 

_ Her voice was so loud, so much clearer than it had been before.  _

With great effort, he found his feet again, and stumbled, drifting to the side a few steps. He gripped the sword tightly in his hand and searched wearily, feeling heavy and far away. When it’s great eye came into view, a calming blue even as its body churned a sickly pink, he took a deep, steadying breath and closed his eyes for just the smallest moment.

_ I knew it was over before even she did. But she never left me. Not that day.  _

Voices around him again, soft in a way that spoke to distance rather than gentleness, for there was nothing gentle about the desperate words calling for him. They were frantic, those words, but they were so warbled he couldn’t tell what they meant. He couldn’t understand them anymore. It was as if he were listening through a thick fog, or under deep water. But the voice was there, regardless. And he took comfort from it in a distant sort of way.

_ She should have left me. Then maybe things wouldn’t have… _

The ringing grew louder, higher pitched. It was a warning, an omen, but he waited, breathing deeply and staring up at the swirling eye. He ignored the weak red light centered on his chest. He ignored the numbness in his legs and the burning in his side, the blood slick on the grip of the sword, the icy rain making his already trembling form shiver from cold. He only watched the eye. 

_ Do you think, if...if things had been different, we would have… _

The sun was gone, its light snuffed out by the heavy clouds and the darkness creeping over the horizon. Thunder rumbled and lightning flashed, and the ground beneath him shook again, almost in retaliation. But was that his own weakness, his own injuries catching up to him, or something more natural? He couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t even sure how long he had been fighting, now. 

_ I wanted to talk to you again. To tell you everything I meant to say before. _

Time had lost its flow. It seemed he had been waiting for this final strike for hours now, but it had only been minutes since the battle had begun. He knew it couldn’t have been longer. But the cold was seeping into him, and the pain was so great he couldn’t even categorize it anymore. Whatever way of measuring it he used in the past, it was meaningless now. Everything was a slippery blur, an amalgamation of confusing images and maybe memories, but he couldn’t be sure. 

_ Maybe that was silly of me, to...to think we could sort everything out before... _

The sword was heavy in his hand. The glow coming off it would have been blinding at any other time, but the edges of his vision had long blurred, inky black and far off. It was as if he were looking through a long tunnel to see his own hands, to watch the rain fall around him as the blinking of its eye grew faster and faster. 

_ I guess I just wish I could see you again… _

The rain was still falling loudly around him…

_ One more time… _

It was cold…so cold…

_ Talk to you properly… _

The thing moved closer...

_ Tell you... _

He was so tired…

_ Tell you how much I… _

The beam crystallized in the air, a bright, terrible, blinding blue that takes milliseconds to collect in the ugly spinning center of its eye. With one last breath out, he brought his attention back from where it had drifted and clung tighter to the sword, fighting the urge to close his eyes and drift away, at least for a few seconds more. He only needed a few seconds more. 

The thing hummed, then the air split, crackling with power as the beam flew toward him with speed like nothing else he had ever seen. 

_ I wanted to tell you I love you…that I have for a while, I think…I wanted to tell you, but it all happened so fast… _

His shield came up without conscious thought, hitting the beam of light head on and redirecting its power back at the monstrous pink and black ooze which had spewed from the terminal moments ago. 

What followed he experienced only in fragments. 

He felt the power of the beam push him back, his boots sliding on the slick stone surface of Vah Medoh’s back. He felt the metal of his shield warm intensely, felt the flames lick around the edges of it and catch his bare arm, burning into him harshly, despite the short span of time before the rain smothered them. 

He watched the beam strike the thing’s eye, sending it careening backward, where it writhed on the ground, spewing ooze across Medoh’s wings. 

He heard the shrieks it made as it died, watched as it spasmed before disappearing in a flash of garish pink light. 

_ I still love you… _

The space where it had been was empty, clean, unblemished except the old moss and rainwater that covered the dips and crevices of Medoh’s back. There was no blood, no blackish ooze, no dropped weapons or stinking malice or anything of the sort. The beast was gone. 

It was gone. 

The realization seemed to hit him much more suddenly than the beam of light had. His shoulders slumped, his shield hitting the stone ground with a terrible clatter, rocking back and forth on the ground. The sword slipped from his hand next, though it made no sound when it touched the ground, as if it couldn’t be bothered to clatter uselessly. Regardless of its wishes, it came to rest next to his shield, glowing faintly through the dim rain. 

His legs gave out a moment later, and he crumpled to the ground inches from the sword. It continued to glow, though the light seemed to be reacting somehow, pulsing weakly through the rain. 

He did not notice. His eyes were already closed, oblivion drifting toward him and letting dark silence cover him like a blanket. 

The last thing he felt before he sank into the space between awareness and sleep was something feather soft on his arms, pulling him away from the cold ground and into something warm, a frantic, tight, but warm embrace. 

Then everything faded away.

******

Time passed in less than a blink of an eye. 

He could remember the moments before the darkness had come, almost too clearly for the blinding, numbing nothingness that had followed them. The wind had long left him then, his wings too fatigued to try even the most shameful of flights away from the plague fighting him for control. Not that he ever would have taken a path that way. 

But his calls had gone unanswered, and the few sharp glances he could spare in the direction of the Castle’s walls showed only flames, the sickening mass of the beast still flying free in the air. 

He could not bear to think what it’s continued presence meant for the two who had run off to battle it. Death hung heavy in the air, here and everywhere else he could see. 

The beast had shrieked, the grating sound echoing painfully around him, and he had faced it again, tearing his eyes away from the grim realization waiting in the wings. His bow was gone, fallen somewhere far below him. Phantom words in a voice he’d only heard twice in his life scolded him, telling him to bring something else to defend himself with, if the worst happened. 

The worst had happened—was happening. And there was nothing he could do to stop it. Advice had long gone unheeded, and he was alone. No one was going to save him. He had barely managed to send a signal, but it was pointless either way. 

No one was coming. 

He watched wearily as the monster approached him again, a part of him too tired, too worn out and resigned, too knowledgeable about the inevitability of this loss to bother. Not now. He had bothered long enough. 

He was tired. 

His eyes drifted out to the east, where the blurry shape of the Dueling Peaks cropped up along the horizon line. He had a terrible feeling in his chest which had nothing to do with his own imminent peril. If his call had gone unanswered, it could mean only one thing. The others were gone. 

And Link was in trouble. 

It was the last conscious thought he had, before the thing moved closer, it’s great arm raised high and all he knew was darkness. 

He couldn’t hear it, but across Hyrule, someone screamed. 

Nothing was, for a long interlude. Nothing moved or breathed, or so it seemed. Darkness clogged every sense, drowned every thought, choked away every chance he had to tell up from down, time’s passing from eternity, pain from numbness. He had no idea what had happened, where he was, no understanding that anything existed or didn’t. There was only darkness, crushing down on him from every angle, to the point where he couldn’t feel anything but the weight of it. 

Until he heard Medoh cry, and he was jolted back into some strange awareness, detached and watching events unfold as if through a long tunnel. The world unfolded before him in foggy images and distant sensations. 

Medoh’s barrier was engaged, glowing a sickly bright pink. Her cannons were searching the skies as she flew. The rain pounded loudly around him, or so it seemed, hard and cracking in his ears, despite the fact that he couldn’t see himself. 

And there was a white Rito in the sky, circling the cannons to draw their fire, and a Hylian holding a paraglider to keep in the air. 

A moment later he recognized the head of dirty blond hair, even if it was longer than he remembered it, his appearance more haggard and face more scarred. He watched the barrier crumble and disintegrate, watched the mysterious Rito fly away. As Link landed on Medoh’s back, looking worn and cautious, the odd little slate in his hands, he realized that some time must have passed, but how long, he couldn’t be certain.

Link moved efficiently, but differently. There was something loose about him, not quite at ease, but less closed up and hidden than he had been before. He handled Medoh’s puzzles with ease, accepting his advice with nods and the occasional smirk. He tried to warn him of the difficult tasks, more than a bit impressed as Link handled each with little issue. 

But he could not warn him about the beast fast enough, and he watched as it spewed from Medoh’s back. It was the same as it had been when he had fought it—however long it had been since that fight, the monster was entirely unaffected. It howled and immediately went in for the attack, leaving Link to scramble up a quick defense. 

For some time, the battle seemed to be in Link’s favor. He was as skilled with a sword as he ever was, and the glow coming from the sacred blade was nearly blinding in its intensity. Had it always glowed that way?

No matter how well the battle started, the beast was as formidable as Link was stubborn. It fell back when he continued to press, hacking and slashing at it frantically with every opportunity he had. When he paused, it would shriek again and attack, never needing more than a few seconds to regain its bearings. 

But as the battle dragged on, he knew that Link was tiring. He could see it in the gradual slowing of his dodges, the longer and longer time it took him to get back up when he fell. Hits from the beast were no longer lucky. They happened more and more, until with a flash of bright blue light, one of its beams hit its mark, striking Link in the side and blasting him backward into one of the crumbling pillars. 

Link didn’t move for several seconds. 

He had no idea what he had been screaming desperately at that point, but it must have worked, as after a painfully long pause, Link seemed to remember himself and began to push to his feet. His arms shook and his eyes were shut tight in a grimace, but he was rising. He was moving, he was breathing, he was  _ alive.  _

He tried to ignore the blood soaking through his wet tunic, running down his hands. There was so much of it that the rain could not wash it away. It stained his tunic and reddened the puddles on the ground, clung to his hands where he gripped the sword with white knuckles. More and more of it with every second, with every swipe he took at the monster and every blow it returned. 

Somehow, the fight continued for what seemed an eternity more. Each time Link fell, it took longer for him to rise. The side of his tunic was soon so deeply red it almost looked black. His hands were beginning to shake on the hilt of the blade, and his steps were beginning to list toward his injured side, fingers curling over the wound when the battle took even the briefest of pauses. 

When the beast shot another beam of light at him, Link dropped, hard, to the ground to avoid it, and again, did not move. The monster shrieked as if it believed it had won, and it might have appeared that way, were it not for the very weak sign of Link’s continued breathing, slow and labored. He remained slumped on the ground for several seconds too long, only breathing, his eyes distant and dazed as he stared up at the clouds. 

He tried, he  _ tried  _ to get him to stand, to—to flee, if he had to, anything, just—and he watched as somehow, Link found the strength to force himself to his knees. When he managed it, he nearly fell once more, then lingered there for another moment, his eyes shut and expression twisted. His free hand was clamped tightly over his bloody side, shaking, his face pale and drawn tight with pain. 

He would never know how Link pushed through that grimace and stood once again. Even if he was hunched over his bloody side, even if the sword was so loose in his hand it was nearly slipping from his grip, he still stood and faced the monster. 

But the resignation in Link’s eyes was a familiar sight he never wanted to see. 

The monster shrieked when it saw him, and began to target him again. 

Link did not move, no matter how much he begged, how loudly he shouted for him to flee, forget this fight and survive. He didn’t seem to hear his words. He only stared up at the beast, blinking heavily at it and shivering slightly in the rain. 

The sound of the monster’s targeting only increased in pace, until in a starburst of blinding light, it shot a final beam of light toward Link. 

As if in slow motion, he watched as Link’s previously blank expression set into a determined frown. 

He raised his shield at the last possible moment and  _ pushed  _ the beam back at the monster. In a burst of firelight, big enough to send flames curling around the edges of his shield, it reflected, shooting back at its sender and hitting the beast directly in the eye.

With a scream louder than any it had let out previously, the monster careened backward and slumped to the ground. It died screaming, writhing on the back of Medoh’s wings before fading away in smoke and vapor. 

Then the world blurred again, and suddenly he found himself standing on Medoh’s back, just where he had been when he last breathed, as if he had been there the entire time. He looked down at his hands, stunned to find his feathers as bright and clean as they had been when he first flew over Lanayru, watching as the Calamity burned Hyrule Castle. His bow was missing from his back, and his scarf looked a bit frayed around the edges, but beyond that, it seemed he had somehow come out of this unscathed. 

The clatter of metal behind him jolted him from his trance, and he spun around quickly, his heart dropping as he remembered why he was here, who  _ else  _ was here, everything that had just happened. 

He turned in time to watch the sword slip silently from his hand, hardly making any sound as it joined his shield before Link crumpled much more noisily to the ground. 

“Link!”

He rushed over, ignoring the rain beginning to seep through his scarf, and the wind he could now feel was cold and harsh, ignoring even the glowing, inviting orange of Medoh’s main terminal. Those things were all secondary, details he couldn’t afford to pay attention to now. Not when Link was collapsed, staining the stone of Medoh’s wings a deep red and breathing too slowly for the sign to point anywhere but toward death again.

With a numbness building in his thoughts, he dropped to the ground, pulling Link to him and turning him over. The sound that left him when he realized his eyes were already closed was not one he could recognize. It was raw and grief stricken, and that was all he knew.

Link was breathing, but slowly, small shallow breaths that were becoming too spaced out. He was pale, paler than he had ever seen a Hylian before, his skin nearly paper white where scars didn’t crawl across it. Almost the entirety of his tunic, a Rito made snowquill, was burned or bloodied, particularly his side, where the fabric tore away and showed the horrible burn hidden under the fabric. There were cuts on his face, and his hands, scuffs and scrapes and any number of other injuries, but the gash in his side posed the most immediate problem.

His hands were shaking as he pulled Link into his arms, but he moved on instinct, barely noticing it. He scrambled back to his feet as soon as he had a good enough grip on him, leaving the sword where it lay. 

“Okay, okay…” he mumbled to himself, his voice trembling with nerves.

He rushed to the edge of Medoh’s wings and looked down. They were flying too high for him to even think about attempting to drop down to the village. He couldn’t carry Link while he was unconscious—he couldn’t carry him and fly them safely to the village. 

They needed to fly lower, get the attention of someone in the village—maybe that white feathered Rito who had flown Link up to Medoh’s back. He seemed to be a good flyer.

Link groaned as he turned back again, his hand digging into his feathers, hard enough to pull the weaker ones loose, but he hardly noticed. He was too focused on reaching Medoh’s terminal quickly, his thoughts miles ahead to avoid the terror of the current moment. 

“You’re—you’re going to be okay,” he muttered, shifting his grip enough to take the slate from Link’s hip.

A few frantic, scrambling seconds later, he all but slammed the slate onto the terminal and prayed that it would work in waking Medoh again. The terminal glowed bright blue immediately, and Medoh cawed loudly in answer. As if sensing the problem, her wings tilted hard to the left and she cut into a surprisingly sharp dive, for a large stone machine.

The moments it took for them to descend seemed to last an eternity. The rain did not slow, nor did the sun make any reappearance. Link was silent and too light in his arms, his eyes still closed, breathing shallow and uneven now. He shivered in the cold, fingers shaking where they sometimes clung to his arms. 

Medoh cried loud—loud enough to shake her wings beneath them—as they flew low enough that she could land on the perch of Rito if she wanted to. 

But she did not. She circled, so low that the entire village was cast in shadow. If anything would draw attention to their situation, he hoped it was this. Medoh’s body was lit blue, and she was flying low, and calling for attention. Someone had to come. 

He stayed near the bud of the main terminal, eyes constantly scanning the edges of her wings, looking for anyone who could appear from below them and staunchly ignoring the approaching reality of Link’s situation. If they did not get help soon—

A flash of white shot over Medoh’s wing, and the Rito from before appeared, one of his legs bandaged. 

He caught sight of the pair of them quickly and seemed to stall in the air, the shock clear in his widened eyes and stuttered rhythm. But he recovered quickly, and flew over with surprising speed, landing hard in front of him. He winced, likely from the pain of whatever injury he had sustained on his leg, but he did not fall. 

“What happened?” he demanded shortly, his voice low. 

“There’s no time. He needs help.”

Surprisingly, the stranger nodded, and took to the air again. “I’ll be back—try to stop the bleeding.”

He was gone before he could reply, not that he would have said anything nice. 

“Stop the bleeding, what do I look like? An imbecile?” he muttered darkly. His hands were already tight over the gashes in Link’s side, but he pressed down harder, trying not to think about how much blood there was. 

Link groaned weakly, and seemed to be trying to wriggle away from the pain he was no doubt feeling. He pushed weakly at the hand on his side, his expression tight with discomfort, even though he was barely conscious. 

“No, no,” he said, moving his hand away gently and keeping pressure on his side. “I know it hurts, but I have to. It’ll be over in a little while…”

Link went still at his voice, and with what appeared to be herculean effort, pried his eyes open once again. They seemed to be more blue than he remembered, brighter, but they were glassy with pain and distantly heavy, as if he were looking through his eyes from a great distance away. 

“‘Vali?” he croaked, little more than a whisper, brows low and mouth twisted in a grimace. 

“Yes,” he answered a bit too quickly, something deep, hidden in himself relieved to know he remembered. “It’s me, yes.”

The same relief he felt was mirrored in Link’s eyes, and some of the tension left him, his hands loosening around Revali’s. His gaze remained glued to him, like he believed the moment he looked away, he would disappear again. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” he soothed, keeping one hand on his mangled side, but tangling their hands with the other. “I’m here, it’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”

If Link believed the platitude, he didn’t show it. He only continued to stare up at Revali, blinking heavily, taking a moment longer to open his eyes with every blink. His trembling had slowed, but his hand was tight on Revali’s arm, unwilling to let go. Even as unconsciousness seemed keen to drag him down once again, he clung on. 

With a rush of air, the white feathered Rito from before appeared over Medoh’s wings again, this time with two others in tow. Revali looked over at them briefly, a frown set so deep into his expression that it might have been carved into stone. But he turned away quickly, giving his attention back to Link. 

“We’re getting you out of here,” he said, leaving no room for argument. “We’re getting out of here, and then so help me, you are getting the lecture of your life. More terrifying than that Princess of yours.”

He blinked up at him and gave a shaky ghost of a smile, barely a flicker, but there nonetheless. His fingers spasmed on Revali’s arm, then held impossibly tighter. It was nearly painful. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said again, softer, but it was worth repeating, over and over and over, and he wouldn’t have cared how many times he had to say it, to see the relief in Link’s eyes at the words. “I’m here. I’m staying, it’s alright. It’s alright.”

Link’s eyes were bleary and too wet to be blamed entirely on the rain. His tunic was more red than blue, the sword was glowing insistently on the ground, and he was so pale, but all Revali could focus on for the briefest of moments was the strange calm in his expression. His hand shook and dragged awkwardly as he fumbled for a grip somewhere else, eventually grabbing at Revali’s scarf. Even the blood getting onto his scarf didn’t distract him, though the loose feathers stuck to Link’s hands did, if only for a moment. 

Then Link’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and he went limp, and every coherent thought he might have had left him instantly. 

Whatever sound Revali made in that moment, he didn’t know. It was lost to the wind and the rain, drowned out by Medoh’s shrieking and the other Rito crowding around him. But even so, he never would have been able to categorize the cataclysmic storm of gaping fear and panic and _ please Hylia don’t let him be gone  _ that overran anything else he might have felt in that moment. Even when the other Rito had come rushing over, talking at him and over him and doing who knows what, he could only stare, and cling to Link like he had clung to him only moments ago. He felt like he was drifting backward into that dark place he’d been in before, too distant and foggy to feel anything beyond the panging echoes of the world around him. 

Medoh called again, circling lower and lower and lower, the glow of her terminal lighting Rito Village a bright, blinding blue. 

******

“He’ll likely sleep for a few hours at least. Looks wiped out, the poor thing, and the potion will only add to it. Best to let him rest for now.”

Revali nodded numbly to the words of the strange Rito who ran the inn. He wasn’t even looking at them, hadn’t been the entire time they had been running all around, grabbing bandages and elixir bottles, shouting for others, names he didn’t know and hardly caught. 

When they tried to brush him away, however, he stayed, planting his feet to the point his talons nearly dug into the lacquered wood of the inn floor. They seemed to sense the losing battle, and had let him hover at the bed’s other end as they worked, too distracted with coaxing down healing potions and wrapping wounds that refused to close fully. 

“If he does wake, try to keep him calm. He shouldn’t leave that bed. Not until tomorrow, at least. Oh, and if he’s in pain still, you can give him another fairy tonic in about an hour.”

He only nodded again, too distracted and distant to come up with any other reply. He hardly noticed as they sighed and walked away, leaving him to stand over the bed alone. He didn’t care where they went, or what they thought of him. All he cared about was the stupid Hylian in the bed.

“Here.”

He looked up as they nudged his arm, meeting their eyes for a moment before looking down at what they held out to him. It looked to be a rag, dripping water onto the floor. 

His confusion must have shown through, because they sighed, shaking their head at him. “To get the blood off of you,” they said, gently, coaxing, the same tone he’d heard them use as they healed, muttering under their breath in a scolding tone only a parent could manage. 

They offered the rag to him again, and he took it, only then really noticing the blood on his feathers, dry and flaking in some places and still wet in others. Fresh or old, it glared up at him a garish red-brown against his feathers. 

Stomach rolling, he barely noticed as the inn worker left, too focused on scrubbing furiously at the red on his hands, his arms. Time slipped away again, lost in the frantic, desperate need to get rid of that remnant, that sign of what had happened. He couldn’t stare the evidence of almost-loss in the face. Not when they had only just made it out of it. 

Some time later, when the rag had gone from white to a pink too deep to be acknowledged, and his feathers were rather a bit more fluffed and agitated than normal, his breath returned back to a normal rhythm, and the tightness in his chest eased away. He pulled his scarf off, throwing it somewhere he couldn’t see, and let the rag follow it with a wet smack. 

Done. He was done. It was  _ over.  _ A forced breath in, then out, and he turned his attention back to the bed. 

Link was bundled in blankets, breathing evenly and quietly, completely undisturbed by the panic of moments before. With his hair still stuck to his forehead from the rain and face slack with unconsciousness, he looked much younger than Revali remembered, despite the time which he knew—could  _ feel,  _ deep inside himself—had passed. There was something about the peacefulness of his expression, the blankness that didn’t come from crushing down emotion but rather from real calm, that made the supposed Hero look young and small in the bed. 

The shadows under his eyes and the scars crawling up his cheek said differently. Revali tried not to think about them, or the dark look that had haunted Link’s expression as he fought the beast. That look was entirely foreign—never, not even in the fights they had seen together, not even  _ that _ day, when he had seen him last before leaving for Medoh—Link had never looked like that. 

How long had Link been alone? What had even happened to him, all those years ago—or, or since then—to put that look in his eyes? 

Revali didn’t know. 

But he had seen the scars on his chest, once they had...once they got the blood off him. Large starbursts and terrible slashes, they spiderwebbed all across Link’s chest, creeping over his shoulder and up to his cheek. Reddish and shiny, like old burns, too large and too many to be anything but devastating. 

They looked the same as the fresh gashes in his side, the ones from that  _ thing’s _ beam, the one only just healed by more healing potions than he had ever seen administered in one go. Even the bandages they had wrapped around his torso were soaked in fairy tonic. All of that, from just a few grazes of those beams, just one or two good hits from that  _ thing  _ had torn Link’s side open and carved a whole new set of shiny splotches onto his skin. 

And still, Link looked far too pale for Revali’s comfort. Too pale and too thin. Had he been eating right? It didn’t look like it. No nearly grown Hylian should look so small...

Whatever it was he had missed in the dark time between the last battle and this one, it had clearly taken its toll on them both. He ought to speak to the elder, try to sort out what had happened, or at least get Medoh into proper position, rather than leaving her to circle Rito Village.

But he found he couldn’t drum up concern for anything beyond Link. It didn’t matter right now what happened to the others, or to the Princess, or the terrifying pink storm surrounding Hyrule Castle he had caught a glimpse of as they flew down. Those things could be handled later, when he could think straight and had more information. 

All that mattered now was Link.

He sighed, slumping down onto the bed next to Link’s and watching his chest rise and fall slowly. At least some of the color had come back into his cheeks, even if he did still look a bit pasty. When they had first got him down to the village, he really did look like death warmed over. For a moment he thought—

But he couldn’t think that way. It was pointless to. After all, Link  _ wasn’t _ ...dead. He wasn’t. They had got him down in time, and forced enough healing potion into him to resurrect a god. 

And it was  _ working. _ The smaller wounds—the burns on his hands and the scrapes along his arms—were all but gone now, with the wound on his side the only gash stubborn enough to need proper bandaging. Even that was mostly a precaution, if he heard the healer right. The healing elixirs took time to work to their full effect, but they had pulled Link out of danger very quickly. 

He was only sleeping. Nothing more malicious was happening.

Still, that didn’t stop the thought of what could have been from disturbing him, the longer he sat there and stared at Link’s still face. Too scarred, too thin, and too pale. 

There were too many unknowns—about what had happened in the past, what had happened since then, just what had happened to  _ Link  _ in general—for him to be comfortable just sitting here, stewing in it all. 

And that wasn’t even taking into consideration what had happened up on Medoh. He knew, could feel it in his bones that it wasn’t a memory that would leave him any time soon. Even now, when he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the blood was long gone from his feathers, when he had pulled off his scarf and balled it up somewhere he couldn’t see, when he knew, he  _ knew _ that Link would be alright—he couldn’t brush away the image of blood on his hands, on his scarf, on Link’s tunic...everywhere. He couldn’t get the imprint of it out of his mind. 

Link’s expression scrunched in his sleep, twisting up for a moment as he wiggled under the heavy blanket, and Revali went still and silent, not wanting to wake him. But the discomfort apparently left him as soon as it had appeared, wiping away and falling back to the same peacefully blank look he had worn since they had given him the last healing elixir. 

As his breathing evened out, Revali slowly relaxed again. He watched him for a moment of quiet contemplation, no longer so caught up in the new scars or the panic of what might have happened to be unable to think clearly. 

There was something in this that was almost like old times, after all. This waiting, it was familiar. He had done this a thousand times. Link did something stupid, got himself hurt, and Revali waited for him to get patched up, then scolded him. They had plenty of close calls in the past. None as close as this had been, but still. 

They were both warriors, and champions chosen to fight the Calamity, to boot. Injuries were bound to happen, and they happened often. They had been witness to enough patch jobs to both be accustomed to it—to putting each other back together. 

But seeing Link so pale, covered in blood and barely keeping awake...it went beyond handling the typical knocks and scratches he was more accustomed to. And as much as he pushed it away for now, he knew they would need to have a serious talk about what had happened between their last battle and now. 

Time had certainly passed. How much, he couldn’t be certain, but Rito Village was different from how he remembered it. The stares of the other Rito lasted just a few seconds too long to be considered...normal. The village itself had changed as well, he was sure, but he hadn’t exactly been paying the architecture much mind when they brought Link here. 

And unless he was mistaken, Link looked...older than he did the last time he had seen him. He had more scars, maybe he was a bit taller, and thinner, but that wasn’t a good thing. His hair was certainly longer. It had to be well past his shoulders, judging by how much of it there was fanning out across the pillow, as tangled and disheveled as he kept it before.

Or maybe the better way to put it was he  _ didn’t _ keep it. Link had never had enough patience to do more than the bare minimum with his hair. It was only when Revali forced him to sit still long enough to braid his hair that he actually kept it nice for a while. When it was braided, he somehow managed to keep it together. Left to his own devices, though, it was a mess.

Revali tutted at the tangles he could see even from here. His hair was pulled back from his face, but that was about it, the rest was loose and knotted up. The rain water had only made it more chaotic, drying in a dozen different directions and frizzing out more than a fledgling’s new feathers. 

The sight of it was almost offensive. Nevermind, it  _ was _ an offense. One he wasn’t going to continue to stare at for hours until Link woke up.

Besides, he had nothing better to do with his time.

With a dramatic huff, he pushed off the bed he had been sitting on and sat instead on the little bit of space left on Link’s. The bed jostled only slightly, and Link didn’t stir beyond a flicker of a frown, gone as quick as it had come. Revali watched him for another quiet moment, perhaps trying not to wake him. 

When he continued to sleep undisturbed, he rolled his eyes and sat more comfortably, muttering darkly as he started to loosen some of the knots in Link’s hair. He went slowly, and carefully, gentle enough even as he grumbled to let Link keep sleeping unaware. Most of the knots were small, but there was a nasty tangle at the back that he had to work through for several minutes before it came undone. 

He pulled a knot loose closer to his face, and Link stirred, mumbling something incoherent with another scrunched expression. Revali went still, his hand frozen. 

But Link only sighed, hummed something nonsensical, and leaned into Revali’s hand, a very faint smile lifting his lips just a touch. 

Revali sagged, brushing some of the hair out of his face. “You idiot.”

Link hummed again, one eye cracking open long enough to give him a halfhearted glare before he fell back asleep, still laying against his hand with half a smile stuck on his face.

******

It was dark when Link finally stirred enough to keep his eyes open longer than a few seconds. The clouds had long cleared away, and the moon was still high in the sky, throwing pale light across the beds and making long shadows of the inn’s pillars. Revali was dozing off, still sitting on the same bed as Link, humming some nonsensical tune the origins of which he couldn’t recall. His hand had moved back to Link’s hair, petting at it distractedly, now that it wasn’t as tangled as before. 

He startled as Link shifted on the bed, only just catching himself on the headboard before he could fall. The jostling woke Link further, and suddenly they were eye to eye again, this time, with Link fully awake and not bleeding all over Medoh’s back. 

Revali went absolutely still, and Link hardly moved either, both apparently content to watch each other silently for a moment, nothing moving but the wind as it blew around them. A hundred years worth of unspoken words seemed to pass between them in that brief interlude, a thousand different emotions flitting through their eyes before they mutually settled somewhere between relief and weariness. 

“Are you in any pain?” Revali looked him over, as if some other injury would appear suddenly, missed in the frantic healing from earlier and the hours that had passed since. 

But Link shook his head, and all the tension went out of Revali for a brief moment. He brushed the hair off Link’s forehead, fingertips ghosting over one of the scars that crawled too high there, old and faded. The relief twisted into something sharper, more pained. 

“Don’t.  _ Ever.  _ Do that again,” he said, his voice jagged like broken glass, and something equally shattered in his eyes. “You could have—do you have any idea what would have happened if you—”

Link’s eyes went dark, and he frowned, an expression somehow more twisted now than it had been when he had been in pain.  _ “I didn’t,”  _ he signed, a bit disjointedly, the motions sharp.  _ “I’m fine. I handled it.” _

“Handled it?” Revali repeated, pulling back and starting at him, eyes narrowed. “Do you call nearly bleeding out  _ handling _ it—”

_ “It’s dead,” _ he cut him off, scowling.  _ “It’s dead. That’s all that matters.” _

“All that—” Link moved to cut in again, but Revali caught his hands before he could. “No, you listen. I don’t care what happened to that stupid disgusting monster. I care about  _ you.” _

He gave him a very strange look, then. He almost looked surprised, but the expression was tainted still by the anger burning in his eyes. With a hard yank, he freed his hands from Revali’s grip and signed rapidly. 

_ “I killed it. It’s gone. I’ll get the rest and—” _

“The rest?”

The question seemed to throw him off, and he looked away, the momentum of anger gone as quickly as it had come.  _ “I came for you first,”  _ he signed, much slower than before, his expression hidden by his hair.  _ “I’ll free the rest and then I’ll fight the Calamity and it will be over…I won’t fail again.” _

His hands shook, fidgeting and frenetic, slipping over signs before picking at the blanket on the bed, too quickly to have any purpose beyond hiding the trembling or losing some nervousness through the motion. Revali’s eyes followed his hands, stalling, as if he expected him to finish the multitude of implied thoughts that went along with his statement. 

“Link,” he said slowly, all the frustration gone now from his voice. Now, he was only cautious, confused. “What do you mean?”

The question drew his eyes up from the blanket, and that dark, empty look that had come over him on Medoh’s back had returned, full force. Resignation, or perhaps defeat, drowned the usual light in his eyes and left only a hollow sort of darkness in its wake. 

_ “I came for you first,”  _ he repeated.  _ “But the others are still trapped. I haven’t...I still have to free them. Before I can face it. I can’t fail again. This is our last chance.” _

“What are you…”

Link shook his head as he trailed off, and began to sign again, his motions almost mechanical.  _ “I couldn’t beat it then. And Zelda didn’t have her power. You all were...gone. We ran. The guardians chased us. I took out as many as I could, but there were too many of them.” _

He stopped, breathing too quickly and too unevenly to be considered calm, his hands bunched up and twisting the blanket over him. It did little to hide the shaking, which had only gotten worse. 

Revali stared at him, any coherent thought he might have had, any script he might have thought this conversation would follow long thrown out the window. “What happened?”

Link looked up at him for a brief moment, then away again, somewhere in the distance that wasn’t really there.  _ “Zelda found her power, but it was too late. I...fell. And she put me in the—the shrine they found, remember? On the Plateau…” _

They both went silent, and the air was thick with the time lost between them. The anger, the frustration of the moments prior was forgotten, at least temporarily, too overtaken by the weight of realization, slowly descending on Revali as Link’s words sunk in. 

The shrine—he remembered when the Princess (and that odd little Sheikah woman who was always running around with her) had come bounding around them all, babbling incessantly about some shrine they had discovered on the old Plateau. He could vaguely recall the two of them speaking animatedly about what the shrine could have been for. Something about healing…

It hit him suddenly, harder and more felling than even the moment his eyes fell closed on Medoh’s wings. He stared down at him, the ground gone out from beneath them, too afraid to question if what he knew had happened could have been true. And Link only continued to stare at his hands, fingers trembling where he still clung to the blanket. 

“How…” he stopped, cleared his throat painfully, and started again. “How long?”

Link did not answer immediately. His eyes were still somewhere else, alarmingly distant. The darkness was all but gone from his expression, replaced by something so hollowed out he almost wanted to rescind the question and never ask it again. But he had to know. He had to. 

_ “One hundred years,”  _ he eventually signed, his hands shaking so much the signs were nearly illegible.

He almost wished he hadn’t understood them. He nearly wished that Link hadn’t told him, wished that he would refuse or claim he did not know. But now, now he knew, and it made too much sense, even with how little of his home he had seen, how short the time he had spoken to Link so far and already he knew he was _changed,_ and _different,_ because _one hundred years had passed._

A century, a century since they had turned away from each other that day and sworn to end it, since he had lost that battle and fallen into darkness. One hundred years, and Link had been just as lost, just as drowned and buried in darkness as he had been. 

And he had come back just to  _ fight it all again,  _ just to—

Just to nearly lose it all again, because he had no help, and how could they ever have expected him to do this, let alone to do it all alone—

One hundred years, and he had no idea what had happened in that endless expanse of time. It was gone, lost to him, drowned in darkness and emptiness, no perception, no sense of anything that had happened or could have happened. And now, the reality of a  _ century’s passing  _ was dropped onto him, dragging him down, back into another darkness, sinking him in the terror of knowing that  _ everyone he’d ever known, everything he loved and hated and cared for in this world was gone, if not destroyed by the Calamity then worn away by time and he was alone— _

Suddenly there were hands on his arms and he jolted back to awareness with a painful lurch, only then noticing how ragged his breathing had become, how lost in his spiraling thoughts he had become. 

“‘Vali,” he said, insistent, even though his voice was hoarse and hardly made it past a whisper. His hands were tight on his arms, nearly painful in their grounding, but he pulled one away to sign a quick,  _ “Okay?” _

Revali nodded, then shook his head, because  _ no, _ he really wasn’t. “I’m sorry.”

Link frowned at him.  _ “Nothing to be sorry for.” _

He had no answer to that. Because wasn’t there so much he had to apologize for? For failing,  _ one hundred years ago, _ just like all the others apparently had, and leaving Link—leaving him to fight a battle he had no chance of winning, not with no one behind him. Without their help, without the Princess’ power at  _ least, _ they knew even then that he wouldn’t be able to succeed. 

And those were the odds they left him with. That was the fight he had—had  _ died _ in, a hopeless fight, with no one coming to help. No hope of winning. 

It was—it was too similar to that realization he had on Medoh,  _ one hundred years ago _ with the beast staring him down, his weapon gone and exhaustion making him slow. They had left Link to that, and who knew what had happened to him then, or in the  _ century _ that had passed since then. 

Who knew what had happened at  _ all _ since then. Rito Village still stood, but what had they been through since he had lost himself to darkness? And the rest of Hyrule, beyond the safety of the cliffs and Hebra’s mountains...what had happened to the people who lived there? 

It was too much, too much at once. Too much weight to bear at one time—to handle the fact that not only had Link  _ fallen _ but the battle that seemed only moments ago, days at most, had been a  _ century _ ago. Their world had kept spinning on without them, somehow, in spite of the monstrous evil that had circled it the last he had seen it, and that might have been a comforting thought if it weren’t tempered by the very real threat he knew still hung over their heads. 

And the hesitance in Link’s eyes even now, behind the concern at whatever panic stricken moment they had just shared. There were things he still didn’t know, things that Link had not told him, and of course there were. One hundred years, lost between the two of them, and now they were faced with each other again...the pieces wouldn’t come back together smoothly, even if they hadn’t found each other again in such a traumatic way. 

Link’s hands were still tight on his arms, not painfully so, but gripping onto him firmly all the same. When he had sat up, Revali couldn’t say, but the effort of it seemed to be getting to him now, if the shaking of his shoulders was anything to go by. He looked far past tired, nearly exhausted. It was likely the only thing keeping him up was sheer spite. 

“You should lay back down,” he said, shifting his arms enough to grab his wrists and pry his hands away. “You’re falling over as it is…”

Link, pale faced, and with his bandages bunched and tight, only nodded, letting him push him back down and pull the blanket over him. 

But when he leaned back and began to pull away, he lurched up, grabbing Revali’s arm fast once again. It was a harder grip than before, his nails digging into his feathers. There was nothing soft about it, nor was there anything short of desperation in his eyes as he stared up at Revali—a look too similar to the one he’d given him up on Medoh, when they were both covered in blood and the future had been anything but certain. 

Revali breathed out slowly, a heavy, overwrought sound, and went back to the way he had been before, when Link had just woken up, leaned back against the headboard. He didn’t try to pull his hands off his arm.

“I’m not going anywhere, love…” he whispered, his voice so soft it was barely audible at all. But he knew Link heard him by the way his hands went loose and he leaned into his side, all sharp bones and stupid frizzing hair. “I’m staying here. It’s alright…”

Link was silent, his hands drifting to wrap loosely around Revali’s torso, hiding his face in his side. His breathing was slowing down again, calm washing over the pair of them gently, like the easiest of spring rainstorms, only enough to wet the leaves a little bit before the sun came out again. The wind sighed around them, and Revali hummed with it, something tuneless but soothing all the same. 

“It’s alright.”


End file.
